When a Client Becomes a Friend — and Then They're Gone (VIDEO)

A deeply personal reflection on digital relationships, unexpected loss, and the legacy we leave behind when we live fully — at any age.

For three years, I coached April Pruitt — a late-blooming dreamer in her 60s who traded a career in finance for a new creative chapter. Together, we launched her podcast, celebrated her first paid voiceover gig, and laughed through tech struggles and cat cameos on Zoom.

Then suddenly… she was gone.

WATCH THIS EPISODE ON YOUTUBE

•  It’s never too late to start: April launched a podcast and began a voice acting career at 68.
  
  
• Coaching is more than strategy: It’s about holding space, believing in someone, and watching them grow.
  
  
• Digital bonds are just as real — You can grieve someone you never met in person.
  
  
• Grief can show up in unexpected places: Losing a client might not seem like a big deal… until it is.
  
  

About the show:

Sam Laliberte -  entrepreneur, digital nomad and freedom seeker, hosts the Freedom Lifestyle Podcast to expose people to the many ways you can design your dream life and unlock your own version of the freedom lifestyle. Her guests have empowered themselves through flexible work as a way to “have it all” - financial, location AND schedule freedom. 

Transcript

Sam Laliberte: 0:02

This is a story about a woman in her late sixties who refused to let her age or her inexperience. Prevent her from creating the life that she always had wanted. This is a story about my dear friend April Pruitt.

April Pruitt: 0:18

Hi. I am April, and I've been a client of Sam's for just over two years. She helped me create my podcast and I'm on my third season. Yay.

Sam Laliberte: 0:29

April 1st reached out to me about three years ago. She had recently been laid off from her job in finance and decided that this was gonna be the opportunity for her to do something creative. And on our first call, she admitted to me that she. was Reserved about me. She was hesitant. She had recently been let down by a different business coach who had kind of promised her the world, but then didn't really deliver, and she was at that point in her dream life cycle where she was. like So close to giving up and so close to feeling that it was never gonna happen. And so I really felt a little bit of that desperation on the call with her. Not that she was needing me to prove myself or that she was testing me, but more that she just desperately wanted this to work and didn't want her get her hopes up a second time. April had an amazing idea. She had this vision of building a community and a podcast series geared towards women who were at the end of their careers, who were at a later stage of life. Women who at that age of life often feel like they are overlooked, often feel like they're invisible, people think that they should be slowing down, but these women that she wanted to speak to didn't feel like they were ready to slow down. These women she had in mind, they still wanted to speed up. There were so many things that they still wanted to do in their life and they were still ready to bloom. Her concept was all about living and mid bloom, and I thought it was. Excellent. I had never worked with a creator who was targeting that market before, and I thought that there was a lot of real opportunity for her to make an impact in a meaningful way to speak to women who, yeah, had often felt overlooked and invisible sometimes as they got later in their career and aged.

April Pruitt: 2:27

I'm on a mission to flip the narrative and redefine what it means to be middle aged.

Sam Laliberte: 2:33

Over the three years that I knew April, we spoke on a weekly basis, whether it be Google meets or Zoom calls and video chats, or even just messages on WhatsApp. She signed up for every single group program I launched in the three years that we knew each other. I really felt like she was one of my biggest fans. She believed in me and she would mirror back to me what a great coach she thought I was. She would tell me how much of an impact I was making in her life, and it felt so satisfying to know that I was genuinely helping her and I was watching her build her dream life and finally do the thing that she had wanted to do. and I knew I was playing a big role in that process.

April Pruitt: 3:19

Sam is extremely supportive. She's straightforward and honest, and she will work hard for you. So I highly, highly recommend Sam. I.

Sam Laliberte: 3:31

Over the three years, I watched April learn so many new skills. She taught herself how to become a content creator who had a podcast series, who had a YouTube channel. She even told me she had a dream of becoming a voice actor. She had an incredible voice. And we helped her launch that as a revenue stream. She was not scared to learn new skills, even though she didn't grow up with the internet. April was 64 years old when we first met, and I remember she didn't know the keyboard shortcut for copy and paste. I remember on one of our calls. after several minutes, I would say probably like 15 solid minutes, she figured out how to share her screen with me. We were laughing the entire time she could laugh at herself so well, and I was watching her literally highlight a sentence, right click, hit copy, go up that file, hit paste, and she was doing that over and over again. And I'm like, April, do you not know about the keyboard shortcut for copy and paste? That just paints a little picture for you about April's savviness when it came to computer skills when we first met, but within a year she had purchased equipment. She was creating content, she was editing her content a lot of the time herself. She really wanted to learn new skills and was going for it.

April Pruitt: 5:00

Hey, Sam. So I wanna do short videos, but I need help with lighting where I should be standing or sitting. I'm not ready to do the walk around. With my phone, so, and do I need to get one of those ring lights? I'm just trying to figure out what's best before I start doing that stuff.

Sam Laliberte: 5:20

She launched that podcast, she created her video series, and not only was she finally speaking to that woman That she sought after that woman who was in middle age still wanting to bloom and feeling overlooked by society. But over a three years, she confided so much to me about her life story. For many years, she suffered from childhoods. sexual abuse and decided that now that she had a platform, she wanted to talk about it and she wanted to. Talk about trauma and she started to have therapists come on her podcast and talk about women who at a later stage of life, sometime these experiences that happen to you when you're younger, that you thought you had kind of blocked away. Sometimes they come back up later in life and she was really bringing us along for that journey of what it was like to unpack some of that stuff in her midlife, in the phase of life that she was in. And people were responding to her content. She was getting hundreds if not thousands of downloads on her episodes. I remember we pitched Apple Podcasts. On why she should be featured for International Women's Day. And they agreed, they featured her right on the homepage in March when they were celebrating female podcast creators on their app. And that was so rewarding to just see how excited she was about all of that. I think she felt very validated that her idea that she had for a really long time. was finally out in the world and people were loving it. People were finding it helpful and valuable. She was my only client who turned on the feature of fan mail, which is a feature you can turn on as a podcast creator who hosts on Buzzsprout and people were writing in. I remember thinking when she wanted to turn that on, like, oh, it's so hard to get two-way engagement as a podcast creator, You know this if you have your own show, but sure enough, she had people writing in fan mail about the impact that her podcast was having on their lives, and it was so exciting for her and she was really just getting started. I. I recall over the past year, she decided that she wanted to turn one of her spare bedrooms into a recording studio, and she had invested in all of this new gear, microphones, soundproofing cameras. She had hired a couple young boys who had lived on the street to come in and set everything up for her and do all of the labor and heavy lifting. She was so excited about where things were gonna go, and had recently brought her series to YouTube, and while it was a bit of a jump for her, she was very nervous speaking on camera at the beginning. Over several calls and several versions of ring lights, she finally felt ready to start creating videos and now having a video element to her podcast.

April Pruitt: 8:34

um, this lighting, I just don't look good in it, so I'm still trying to figure this shit out. All right, see, so.

Sam Laliberte: 8:46

Two months ago, April messaged me saying that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was very sudden. She found out that it was stage four and that it was past the point of being able to really reverse the damage that had been done. But in her own words, she said it wasn't a death sentence. The doctors had told her she had years to live and she wasn't gonna let this stop her. She was really gonna make the most of these next couple of years. To put it into perspective of really where her head was at. I had just launched my brand new pod squad program, which is a six months intensive program for established podcasters where you have the option to do. Unlimited coaching calls with me. That's the fast track option. And not only was she ready to sign up for the six month program, she wanted fast track. She didn't want just a monthly call. She wanted to be able to have calls every single week, connect as often as possible, and she. was Speeding up. She was not slowing down. I remember feeling really hesitant about taking her money and enrolling her in the program after she had shared with me her health condition and this news she had. But she told me, now is a better time than ever. I have ideas for how I can bring women along for this journey of me being diagnosed with women's cancer and going through. The reality of someone who has stage four breast cancer, she felt like it was an opportunity to create more content. She was inspired by it all. April and I had our last video call on June 5th. I remember she was in a hospital bed. And she had given me the heads up ahead of time that she was gonna be taking the call from the hospital. But not to worry, she was heading home in just a couple of days. She was so excited to be reunited with her two cats that were waiting at home for her, and she had sent me a selfie beforehand. I'm gonna put it on the screen here for you to see of her being like, heads up. This is my current. State. And so I get on the video call not really knowing what to expect, what kinda condition is she gonna be in? What is her mood gonna be like? Is she gonna be low energy? what is her vibe gonna be? And. Her vibe was better than ever. She was laughing with the staff. She was laughing with me. She was introducing me to some of the nurses that had been caring for her who were gonna come on the podcast and she was gonna be interviewing them. And her purpose for this call from her hospital bed is she wanted me to show her how to finally make an Instagram reel. We had gotten her on Instagram over the years. We were working together, and she knew how to regularly post, but she had never actually created an Instagram reel yet, and so we were truly workshopping it. I had my phone out. She had her We were doing step by step of what we were gonna be posting and how she was gonna add stickers to it and do the captions and add a filter that was flattering. We were workshopping the whole thing. And then I asked her, well, what is the reel about? Because she had prerecorded it before I hopped on the call, and it was a video right from her hospital bed, a selfie in her gown, talking to her audience. About this announcement, she was announcing the fact that she had breast cancer and was declaring that she wasn't gonna let this stop her, and she was actually going to bring people along for the journey. Everything from how she found out. To what some of the warning signs were that she wanted other women to know about. She wanted to create content about how people get kind of weird when you tell them that you have cancer and how she had advice for people who maybe who had friends or family members who had cancer to know what to say because she understood it was uncomfortable. She had so many ideas and so many things to share. And sure enough, on that call on June 5th, we hit published together and she posted her first ever Instagram reel

April Pruitt: 13:20

I never thought I would be making a video like this, but, but I am, I have cancer, I have stage four, um, cancer that's metastasized, but there. Is a lot of hope and living with cancer these days. So, what can I say? I'm still in shock. It's been probably a little over two months since it was confirmed. So I'm taking you on this new journey I never thought I would be on, and I hope that you'll stay with me as I work through this progress and I get a better understanding of what people I know have gone through as I'm going through this process. So life is forever changing, is forever evolving, is forever surprising you. I.

Sam Laliberte: 14:18

that was April's final post she ever did on social media, and it was the final time her and I spoke. A couple weeks later, we had our group call scheduled for the pod squad, and she didn't show up to it, which I didn't think was abnormal. Sometimes April would get busy and she would miss meetings, and I wouldn't hear from her for a couple days, and then she would say to me, sorry, things were crazy. Or she would say, you know what? I just wasn't feeling up for it. My mental health was struggling today and I just, I couldn't join, and that would happen over the last several years. And so when she didn't join the call, I didn't really think anything of it. I sent her a text saying, we missed you. We missed your energy. I was sad that she missed the group call because she just has such an amazing energy. And as I mentioned, an incredible voice and just on camera presence. So whenever we would be sharing our highs and our lows from the week, she just had a way of just charming the entire group. and everyone just loved April and having her on the call was always just such a treat. So I was disappointed when she didn't join, but I wasn't worried. I sent her a text message, basically just saying, Hey, we missed you. Hope to see you on the next one. A week or so went by and I still didn't hear back from her, so I sent her another text saying, Hey, how's it going? Haven't heard from you. And when I did that, I noticed she hadn't been online in like 10 days on WhatsApp. And that's kind of when I started to get a bit worried. That felt strange, but still in my head I thought, okay, well. Maybe there's something wrong with her phone. Maybe she got a new phone. She hasn't figured out how to update WhatsApp, or she doesn't have my number or like something, it's a technological thing. So then I sent her an email saying, Hey, I noticed my last message didn't go through to you. Just checking in. Hope everything's okay. I'm flexible all week. Wanna hop on a call? If Nothing happens. A week later now I'm really worried. I send her another email saying, are you okay? I'm I'm starting to worry. A week after that, I, and this, this is a bit morbid, I basically get a notification that her credit card went through for another month. She was on a subscription for the coaching program. And when I saw that, I was like, what is going on with April? Like, why have I not heard from her now in several weeks? This is scaring me and I went on LinkedIn and I found the post, the video that I had helped her make that Instagram reel, making her announcement. She had actually went and posted it on LinkedIn as well, I'm reading through the comments, oh my goodness, April, I'm so proud of you. You're so strong. Thank you for sharing this. You can do it. I'll be thinking of you. And sure enough, I see someone posted a link to the obituary when I clicked on that link, and I saw her smiling, beautiful, glowing face in the way. That I was so used to seeing it, but in this context it was, it was rattling It took my breath away. I was just in the middle of a workday on my computer, and I audibly gasped. When I saw that, I saw that she had passed away on June 17th, which was 12 days after the last. Video call that I had with her when I was helping her create that video and create that announcement. And when we were talking about all these ideas for all this content that she was gonna be creating, and that is the saddest part about all of this is that April wasn't ready to go. Like she had so much more to share. She had so many ideas and there was so much that she still wanted to do with her life and with her content. And she wanted me as her ride or die. You know, she wanted me in her corner through that whole journey, and I was, I wanted to be there for all of that, and I, I had every intention to be there for that. It is a very strange feeling finding out a client of yours has passed in that way, and at this point she had passed away several weeks ago, and it made me wonder like, would anybody have ever told me? Did anybody even in her life know about me? Like did her friends and family know about this person on the internet that she had been talking to for three years? It was like this thing, this relationship that we had built on the internet that I really thought was just kind of a coach coachee client, professional type relationship, and. What I realized since she's been gone is that, oh my goodness, it was, it was so much more than just a line item on my revenue tracker. She really has been this constant presence in my life over the last three years. Somebody that I also could always count on, as much as I was her coach, she was my loyal student who I knew would always be there to support whatever program I had. And. Whatever idea I wanted to put out there, like she was gonna be a cheerleader and, and really my biggest fan, something I've really been reflecting on is how real these online relationships can be. April and I never met face to face. We never hugged, we never shared a meal. But over three years, over all the video calls, voice notes, hundreds of messages, she really became a part of my life. It is a strange thing to lose somebody that you've never physically been in the same room with, but you still feel the weight of their absence so heavily. These connections that we make online, they are very real, even if the relationship exclusively exists online. And I'm still waiting for a message from her of saying, Hey, sweetie, what? She would always call me like, you're so silly as if you're posting about that. I'm right here. Everything's fine, and just laughing at me the way that she always did. I. It reminds me that coaching, at, at least the way that I approach it, and I'm guessing the way you approach it too, if you're a coach who listens to the show, it isn't just about strategies and accountability and checking boxes, Coaching is about witnessing somebody's evolution and it's about being there for the small wins and the big breakthroughs. And to coach someone to like truly hold space for their becoming is such an honor. And April's journey was no exception. I am sad for so many reasons, but I'm mostly sad that she had so much more to share. She had big dreams even as she was approaching her seventies. She was still upskilling, she was still evolving. She was still investing in herself.

April Pruitt: 21:24

Bottom. It has post story reel live. Yeah. So we're gonna create a story. Okay. So, okay, now, okay. So story. It's still me. Yeah. Nothing's happening. Is the camera looking at you? Hey everyone. Hey, mid bloomers. Here I am with our next to last episode for the year, so let's get rolling.

Sam Laliberte: 21:49

She had actually just discovered the power of chat, GPT And she was so excited about the potential. She was sending me regular screenshots about her interactions with chat GPT, and it was completely blowing her mind, and she was so excited to be leveraging all of this new technology to build her dreams and to build that impact and to scale the success that she had already had. April was just getting started and she, to me, is such a reminder that we have no idea how much time we have left on Earth. Friends, it is a reminder that today is a gift, and if you have something to say, you better say it when you have the chance and you better take that moment while you have it because. This is the only time that's guaranteed for us, right? And if you have dreams, no matter what age, it's not too late to go after them to learn something new and to make a shift and to make sure that you leave this earth really satisfied by what you accomplished, that you lived the life that you authentically knew you wanted to live, and you went for it. April is not leaving us with regrets. April is leaving us before her peak. And she was heading there. She had that momentum coming and I will forever wonder what. Was waiting for her I. and what she was about to accomplish because she was on the up. She really was. And that makes me just so sad. And so this episode is dedicated to April to everybody who's still evolving, who's still dreaming, who's still using their voice, no matter what age, no matter what you're facing, you're not done yet. so use your voice while you have it and remember, it's never too late to dream or to start over.